Author: Jillian Kornblatt
Social media has created a minefield of concerns for both employees and employers. The news is full of stories of employees documenting their questionable off-duty conduct on social media, or posting comments containing racist or derogatory remarks. Often, the employer—or sometimes, the rest of the online community—will demand that the employee be fired. In such a scenario many employers may...
Use of profanity by employees, whether in the workplace, outside the workplace, or on social media, presents difficult legal issues for the employer, as highlighted by a recent Second Circuit Court of Appeals decision overturning the firing of an employee who engaged in a highly profane Facebook rant against a supervisor. Although an employer has a justifiable interest in keeping...
Question: I am a manager in a medium-sized retailer that has locations and employees in 16 states. The company maintains a social media policy, which was recently updated. Last week, I noticed that one of our employees posted some pretty nasty things about the company on Twitter. She accused the company of not treating employees fairly because some had to...
Question: I own a small manufacturing company that employs 25-35 employees, depending on our workload. Over the years, a number of my customers and my employees have “friended” me on Facebook. Last week, I saw that one of our employees had posted a comment that I don’t pay enough overtime and that I’m, “f—ing cheap,” because I don’t give enough...
Question: I read with interest your analysis of pre-employment background checks in Quirky Question # 189. I’ve got a slightly different inquiry touching on the same issue. I’m a Human Resources Executive at a national retail company. During several parts of the year, we need to hire additional cashiers. For many years, we have successfully used a temporary staffing agency...